


The Thickening of Fear

by Pragnificent (PragmaticHominid)



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Hannibal Loves Will, M/M, Post-Finale, Will Loves Hannibal, but it's difficult
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-06
Updated: 2017-03-06
Packaged: 2018-09-29 19:48:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10142651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PragmaticHominid/pseuds/Pragnificent
Summary: "I am scared halfway out of my fucking mind all of the time, Hannibal, because I am living in a house with - I am in bed with, right now - a fucking serial killer.”“I’m curious, Will, because you have known this about me for some time, and yet you were never afraid of me like this before."(More depressing "Will and Hannibal continue to have troubles between each other and with themselves post-final" fic, but at least this one has shades of comfort after all the hurt?)





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is a companion piece to "[The Memory of the Knife](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10079810/chapters/22464395)," but because they are so different stylistically I have posted them as separate stories. 
> 
> They can be read separately, but "The Memory of the Knife" looks at the situation from Will's perspective.

Hannibal knows that he did not break Will.

If it had been his mistake - if he’d miscalculated, pulled when he ought to have pushed, or pushed too hard - the problem would have been more easily corrected. Were that the case, he would understand how to put the pieces back together.

But Will is not broken, and Hannibal knows that he is not the problem. Not, at any rate, not the root of the problem. 

The problem is Will.

The problem, as ever, is what Will refuses to face.

He’s latched onto fear since they rose from the ocean, has drawn it around himself and over his eyes like a comfort blanket, blocking out everything about himself that he doesn’t want to see. Nearly two months have passed since then, and in all of that time Will has refused to move forward. The fear has crawled up inside of him and thickened there and is now set like cement. 

Will will not speak with him.

But Will follows him like a lost puppy whenever he leaves the room.

And Will explodes in fits of terror and rage if Hannibal touches him.

He tries now, though. To see what will happen and because some small foolhardy piece of his heart, naive from a lack of use, insists that Will’s reaction just _might_ be different from what every scrap of his insight and experience knows that it will be.

He stretches his arm across the table to lift a lock of hair that is hanging in front of Will’s eyes and tucks it behind his ear, and Will’s steak knife is in his and moving with such speed that Hannibal barely dodges the slashing blade.

The knife clatters to the floor and Will spins away, rushing for the sink. He barely makes it there in time before his stomach revolts against him.

Hannibal believes, but is not entirely sure, that what he feels now is shame. It is a fairly recent addition to his emotional repertoire. An unwelcome gift, courtesy of his beloved. He doesn’t know what to do about it.     

He cannot stay and listen to the retching. Seething anger builds suddenly, buffeting him like the icy black water that Will had thrown them into, and he does not know in which direction that rage will turn if he stays. When he has Will - in his heart or in the flesh - everything becomes so much _more_ than it is without him, and Hannibal had believed before all of this began that he contained within himself multitudes. He does not know if he can manage this for much longer.

He stays away for hours, knowing that he is hurting Will by doing so, that a matter of minutes Will’s mind will fixate on a horror show of possible scenarios to explain Hannibal’s absence, all the harm that might have befallen Hannibal or that Hannibal might be doing to some stranger as a proxy for Will, and he’s glad for it.

The gladness burns like cheap liquor. He drinks it for lack of anything better.

Hannibal wonders now, laying in the bed while they both pretend to sleep, if he ought to have let Will cut him with that steak knife - a chance to draw blood might have been reassuring for Will. He wonders too, if he has the will to allow him to do such a thing.

“What would you do,” he asks, curious, “if I came to you with a knife and, extending it hilt first, allowed you to cut me in whatever way you please until you felt that we are even?”

Will takes a long time to answer, and in the near silent darkness scenarios bloom within Hannibal’s mind.

Perhaps Will would cut his his throat - quickly and cleanly - and he'd be engulfed a bright giddy hypovolemic daze that lasts only a handful seconds before the blackness settled in. Or, Will might cut him the same way that he cut Will, and leave him alone to bleed out on the floor, death creeping into him like an early morning frost.

For an instant, Hannibal is able to picture a universe in which Will takes the knife and draws from him only a thin line of blood. He licks it from his blade, holding Hannibal’s gaze as he does so, and from then on out things are the way Hannibal meant for them to be.

When Will finally speaks his voice sounds nearly bored. “I’d say that you are a liar and a manipulator,” and the words hit Hannibal like icy water.

The unwelcome truth, wiping away the fantasy in which using the knife fixes things for Will, all the romantic make-believe pictures of himself, hardly caring if he survives the knife because using it fixes what has broken for Will, and afterwards Will is bright and brilliant and happy.

He knows, in his heart, that he does not have it in himself to wait peaceably for the blade, even if it’s Will’s had that bears it. He’d known, too, even before he spoke, that Will would not willingly participate.

Will goes on, bleeding venom into the darken bedroom. “I wouldn’t let you within twenty yards of me with a knife, anyway. Don’t you understand that I’m terrified of you and your fucking knives?”

It’s an absurd thing for him to say, because not five hours ago he had followed Hannibal into the kitchen and sat no more than five feet away while he prepared dinner, but Hannibal understands that it is meant as an expression of Will’s emotional truth rather than the straight facts. He understands, also, that the words are meant to cut him.

Will might know Hannibal’s truth, but Hannibal enjoys the same pleasure in regards to Will. He seeks now to use that truth as a surgeon uses a scalpel to excise a tumor.

“Do you know, Will, why you’re trying so hard to convince yourself that you’re afraid of me?”

Will’s voice has a measured clinical tone. A less astute ear might have missed the note of mockery. There’s more of Chilton in that voice than Hannibal cares to hear. “Do you lack insight, doctor, into yourself and others?” He laughs, bitterly.

In the darkness, Hannibal hears Will turn over to face him. “I am afraid of you because you sliced me open, Hannibal - because you’ve hurt me, with your hands and with your actions and with your words, over and over again, and I have no good reason to believe that you won’t do it again. I’m afraid of you because you killed Abigail, and Bev, and Georgia, and god only knows how many more ‘and’s I would need to get to the end of that list. I am scared halfway out of my fucking mind all of the time, Hannibal, because I am living in a house with - I am in bed with, right now - a fucking serial killer. What part of all of that is difficult for you to understand?”

It is more words than Will has said to him over the course of the last two months. 

“I’m curious, Will, because you have known this about me for some time, yet you were never afraid of me like this before. Even right after you put the pieces together, you were never so frightened. You were angry with me, yes, and I know that you still are, but the fear was always secondary to that. In fact, for someone as defined by fear as you like to imagine yourself to be, there was a decided deficit of fear towards me, which is especially striking in regards to the facts that you have just laid out.”

“Something changed. After we fell.”

“You know what changed.”

“I’m not doing this on purpose, Hannibal. I can’t fucking help it.”   

Hannibal ignores him.

“What frightens you is that you survived,” he tells Will. “That you were not punished with death, no matter how strongly you believed that you - that the both of us - deserved it. You’ve seen that you can have the things that you want and no greater authority - not Fate, not God, not INTERPOL, if we are cautious - will take it away from you.

“The hunt. The black of the blood in the moonlight. _Me_ ,” he says, fierce on the last word, all of the pride of what he is and the lingering wounded rage at Will’s refusal to accept that totality in a single syllable. “These things are no longer simply potentialities. They are yours, bought and paid for, and the implications of that is what terrifies you.

“This is a drywall facade, Will, and beneath it you are bedrock - you always been, but you know it now. It’s simply a knowledge that - like so many other things about yourself - you still refuse to claim.”

There is silence.

On the far side of the bed Will is shivering, and Hannibal feels it on his body, the vibrations traveling to him across the wide expanse of empty mattress.

In his memory palace, the clock ticks off time. Exactly forty-two minutes pass, in darkness, while they both pretend to believe that the other is asleep.

The hand that reaches out to touch Hannibal’s upper arm is jittery, and clammy, and only rests there for a few blessed seconds before drawing away.

But it is something.

**Author's Note:**

> "Blood Makes Noise" by Suzanne Vega was on my mind while I was writing this, and the title is drawn from the lyrics of that song.


End file.
